Our columnist Dawn Neesom has her say
Hands up who else had a nose around Princess Anne’s lounge?
In a world of Zoom, Skype and Facetime calls, we all know more about one another’s homes than we ever thought possible. Bored with the chat? Check out the books/wallpaper/light fitting/ mess in the background. It’s especially fun when it’s a celeb on the telly and they’ve forgotten to have a tidy-up. I’m still slightly traumatised for the poor journalist who randomly left a sex toy on the bookshelves behind her.
But we reached peak sofa-snooping with Princess Anne. The royal posted a picture of her and hubby Tim watching rugby on telly. And you just knew, I mean seriously just KNEW, that the room smelt of wet Labrador. Half-charity shop, half-antique warehouse and a total mismatched muddle – ancient armchairs exploding at the seams, layers of dusty but probably very expensive rugs, messy piles of books and magazines everywhere and every single surface cluttered with ornaments. You’d need a map and compass to navigate a path across the room, and if you had even the tiniest hint of OCD you’d run screaming. But you know what this sneaky peek really said? It said posh.
There’s just something about a cut-glass accent that makes living with chipped tea cups OK. Absolutely nothing against Anne, who works incredibly hard and looks very happy in the picture, but it’s interesting how much your living room says about your class.
Even using the words ‘living room’ marks you out as being more from the ‘working’ classes. I bet Anne and Tim call the room they’re in a drawing room, or possibly a parlour. But it definitely won’t be a lounge – and the idea of them slumping in front of Netflix with a Domino’s just isn’t going to happen.
Posh author Jilly Cooper described those who talk of living rooms as ‘not PLU’, which means ‘people like us’. She did this in a book called Class, which says it all. Now, pass the vacuum cleaner, I’ve come over all twitchy.
‘Ancient armchairs exploding at the seams’